March 2013

Occupy the WSF

March 31, 2013 Uknown, www.spanishrevolution11.wordpress.com Create!

In 1999 the counter-globalisation movement burst onto the streets at the WTO conference in Seattle. Two years later in Porto Alegre, the movement began to organize its own alternative conferences. Since then, every year, representatives of NGOs and social movements gather in a third world location to discuss, to connect, to teach, to learn, to share. The main stream press generally ignores these summits, or makes only a brief mention of their existence. And admittedly, they don’t have a lot of news or entertainment value. Compared to the big economic conferences, where participants are empowered to take decisions which influence nations, regions and the world economy as a whole, a social forum has little to no impact. It’s more of a ‘process’, as participants like to say.

Debt Strangles the 99%

March 27, 2013 Strike Debt, www.occupywallst.org Educate! Health Care

Strike Debt and the Rolling Jubilee believe that no one should have to go into debt to cover basic human rights like health care, education, and housing. One in seven Americans is being pursued by a debt collector. Credit card debt is often the “plastic safety net” that covers for gaps in household budgets caused by financing such essentials. Medical debt is an area of personal debt that no one from outside the United States can even understand. Spanish activists are campaigning against the privatization of their national single-payer health system. They see any payment for medical treatment as the breakdown of a decent society.

Occupy Sandy Builds Worker Power in Far Rockaway

March 27, 2013 Peter Rugh, www.wagingnonviolence.org Create! Worker Rights and Jobs

Three and a half months ago, the walls upstairs at the Church of the Prophecy in Far Rockaway, a low-income coastal neighborhood of New York City, were covered with maps of where help was most needed. The church was a hub for the Occupy Sandy relief effort after Hurricane Sandy. Now, nearly five months after the hurricane struck, the maps have been replaced by posters extolling the virtues of collective struggle and art made by neighborhood children enrolled in Occupy Sandy’s twice-weekly after-school program. “The kids missed a month and a half of school,” explained Luis Casco, a member of the church’s congregation who pulled strings to help move Occupy into Far Rockaway. The after-school program was, in part, his brainchild. “We figured we’d start helping the kids and we could win over their parents. Then we could actually start bigger projects,” he said.

What If They Gave a War and Nobody Paid?

March 27, 2013 David Hartsough, www.wagingnonviolence.org Strategize! Wars and Militarism

As April 15 approaches, make no mistake: The tax money that many of us will be sending to the U.S. government pays for drones that are killing innocent civilians, for “better” nuclear weapons that could put an end of human life on our planet, for building and operating more than 760 military bases in over 130 countries all over the world. We are asked by our government to give moral and financial support to cutting federal spending for our children’s schools, Head Start programs, job training, environmental protection and cleanup, programs for the elderly, and medical care for all so that this same government can spend 50 percent of all our tax dollars on wars and other military expenditures.

After $100,000 Inaugural Donation, Nuclear Deal Gets Closer

March 27, 2013 Keenan Steiner, Sunlight Foundation Educate! Energy, Environment

It turns out there was a good reason, The Nation points out, that we reported extensively on the donors behind President Obama's second presidential inauguration. One of the corporate donors, Southern Company, is expecting a big benefit from the administration. An executive with the Atlanta-based utility said last week that the company expects to finalize its long-awaited $8.3 billion loan guarantee from the administration by the middle of the year to help it build a new nuclear power plant with two reactors, the Wall Street Journal reported. The historic loan approval was made in 2010 -- to the ire of some Democrats and some environmental groups -- but has still been waiting for final Department [...]

Stop Tar Sands Profiteers Week of Action Huge Success!

March 26, 2013 Staff, www.tarsandsblockade.org Resist! Environment

It’s becoming increasingly clear that we cannot rely on corporation-funded politicians to oppose corporate excess; we must engage this destructive industry directly. That’s what we’ve done in Texas, and it’s working: in February, TransCanada reported lower fourth-quarter earnings and admitted that the southern portion of Keystone XL (the Gulf Coast Project) was way behind schedule and only 45 percent completed. By showing up at their offices and putting a stop to “business as usual,” we can show tar sands investors that their lives would be easier and their businesses more secure if they invested in projects that don’t endanger our communities’ health and the chance for a livable climate. Grassroots activists from over 50 organizations are uniting to send a strong message to the industry that TransCanada and its financial backers must rethink their investments in tar sands, the dirtiest fuel on the planet.

Strike Debt Kicks Off Second Debt Buy-Up With March

March 26, 2013 John Knefel, www.truthout.org Resist! Health Care

A coalition of groups associated with Occupy Wall Street took to the streets of midtown Manhattan on Thursday evening calling for the abolition of the for-profit health care system in the United States and the creation of a government-run single-payer system. Around 70 protesters marched to four major health insurance companies to list their grievances with each corporation, often by comparing what they see as the wildly disproportionate salaries of CEOs with health costs for regular patients or the company's average worker's salary. The march was part of a larger project that Strike Debt (which formed from the creative churn of Occupy) is implementing over the week to draw attention to medical debt, which the group sees as a national emergency. Strike Debt also announced that its latest round of a project known as the Rolling Jubilee has bought and abolished over $1 million in medical debt.

King Downing and Jean Casella on Racism, Incarceration and Guantanamo

March 25, 2013 Podcast

King Downing joins Clearing the FOG for the full hour to discuss the criminal justice system, from police encounters with

Walmart Sues Grocery Workers Union, Protesters

March 25, 2013 Jessica Wohl, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! Worker Rights and Jobs

Wal-Mart Stores Inc has sued a major grocery workers union and others who have protested at its Florida stores, the latest salvo in its legal fight to stop "disruptive" rallies in and around its stores by groups seeking better pay and working conditions. Wal-Mart does not have union-represented workers in its U.S. stores. Nevertheless, it has long faced opposition from various labor groups including the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), and from a small but vocal group of current and former employees backed by the union and known as OUR Walmart.

Immigration Protesters Hit Schumer’s Office

March 22, 2013 Humberto Sanchez and Meredith Shiner, www.rollcall.com Resist! Human Rights

A group of about 40 pro-immigration activists led a protest Thursday outside the office of Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., one of a group of eight senators working to draft overhaul legislation. The group is upset about delays in finishing the bill. “The so-called gang of eight, including Sen. Schumer, had said we will have this finished by the end of March,” said Elizabeth Alex, director of central Maryland voter engagement for Casa in Action. “We know they are about to leave on vacation. ... There is still no bill. “We don’t want this to get pushed to the back burner. Every day that they wait more and more immigrant families are being separated,” Alex continued. “So we just came today to remind them that the time is now. They need to do what they promised to do.” Five members of the group were arrested, Alex said.

Immigration Activists Arrested Outside Schumer’s Office

March 22, 2013 Rosalind S. Hermalind, www.washingtonpost.com Resist! Human Rights

A group pushing immigration reform said two dozen of its members briefly took over the office Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Thursday to protest what they say is the slow pace of efforts to get an immigration bill in Congress. Several were arrested outside the office. CASA in Action said its members hung a banner in the Hart Senate Office building, targeting Schumer’s office as the lead Democrat on the Senate’s bipartisan group working on introducing legislation. The action took place a day after Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) publicly complained that the so-called Gang of Eight is taking too long to agree on legislation and their delay means his committee will not be able to approve legislation in April, as he hoped.

Hunger Strike – Emergency Response

March 21, 2013 Staff, www.witnesstorture.org Resist! Wars and Militarism

We will gather for action in New York City, Chicago, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Des Moines, Western Massachusetts, and other cities domestically and internationally next week to denounce the barbaric practice of torture and indefinite detention and to demand justice for the men at Guantanamo.

Three Tactics for a Stronger Climate Movement

March 21, 2013 Melanie Jae Martin, www.yesmagazine.org Strategize! Environment

For decades, the Sierra Club has represented the essence of moderate, establishment environmentalism. Traditionally, its tactics stopped at strictly legal methods of winning support for its causes, such as writing letters to elected representatives, petitioning, and holding permitted rallies. Suddenly, the urgency of climate change has led the group to tactics that approach those of more militant groups, such as Rising Tide or RAMPS (Radical Action for Mountain People’s Survival). Its tactics remain entirely nonviolent, which is a strategic as well as moral decision for many groups, as nonviolent movements tend to gather more widespread involvement rather than scaring people away from participating.

Vision of Positive Future Motivates Activism

March 21, 2013 Eric W. Dolan, www.rawstory.com Organize!

Activists, take note: People support reform if they believe the changes will enhance the future character of society, according to a study published online this month in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Namely, people support a future society that fosters the development of warm and moral individuals. “There are implications for communication, but also for policies themselves. The ‘easy’ answer would be to promote a policy or cause in terms of how it will make people more warm/moral,” Paul G. Bain of the University of Queensland, the lead author of the study, explained to Raw Story via email. “But I think for this to really work it needs to be authentic/real and not just rhetoric – the policies themselves need to promote this.”

The Last Letter

March 21, 2013 Tomas Young, www.truthdig.com Educate! Wars and Militarism

I write this letter on behalf of husbands and wives who have lost spouses, on behalf of children who have lost a parent, on behalf of the fathers and mothers who have lost sons and daughters and on behalf of those who care for the many thousands of my fellow veterans who have brain injuries. I write this letter on behalf of those veterans whose trauma and self-revulsion for what they have witnessed, endured and done in Iraq have led to suicide and on behalf of the active-duty soldiers and Marines who commit, on average, a suicide a day. I write this letter on behalf of the some 1 million Iraqi dead and on behalf of the countless Iraqi wounded. I write this letter on behalf of us all—the human detritus your war has left behind, those who will spend their lives in unending pain and grief.

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